


P'tzatza, Pitzootz, Pitzutz

by CelestialHeavens1



Series: Of Spies and Conmen [6]
Category: Covert Affairs, White Collar
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Gen, Jewish Character, Secret Identity, Secrets, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialHeavens1/pseuds/CelestialHeavens1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime in early season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	P'tzatza, Pitzootz, Pitzutz

**P'tzatza**  (פצצה)- _bomb_

 **Pitzootz**  (פיצוץ)-  _blast_

 **Pitzutz**  (פיצוץ)-  _explosion, fantastic_

_The ringing in his ears gave away the first sign that something wasn't right._

Neal was running with everything that he could towards the FBI building from where the bomb had exploded in the street, from under the car he had been about to get into. The blast had kicked him back and he had started running, when he slammed into Diana without warning. "Neal, are you okay?"

_The next was the resonance from the explosion that vibrated through him. Rubble was in his mouth, in his breath, and while he wasn't afraid for himself, Chanah had been sitting right next to him when he had been knocked down by the wall of heat from the explosion. There was the smell of something burring, something he couldn't quite label and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He couldn't find his sister next to him. Where was she? He couldn't see her. He could hear Chanah screaming, but she was too far away and the ringing was too loud. How had she gotten so far away? He tried to get up, but screamed out from the excruciating pain in his arm. It had to be broken, it just had to be. He surveyed the sight of the burning room again and caught sight of his sister's form on the floor, crawling towards her, keeping in mind to be gentle with his arm. Still, as she lay broken before him, his arms both shot out to shake her, even as he ignored the pain shooting through his right side._

" _Chanah, you're okay_ ," he muttered in Hebrew, grasping the woman in front of him's arms. " _You're okay. I'm going to get us out of here."_

The agent panicked as he spoke in tongues.

"Neal," Diana shook him, carefully, before grabbing his face and looking into his eyes for signs of a concision. There were none, but that didn't stop her worry. "Neal?"

" _Ani mitzta'er."_

"Neal!" She yelled as Peter and Jones came out of the outcome of the building where they had ducked behind when the bomb had exploded. "Boss, he's not responding. I can't understand what he's staying either."

Peter jogged over to them, taking in his CI's thousand-yard stare. It was creepy; the man was staring right at them, but it felt like he was looking through them. "Neal?" Peter questioned, shaking the man's arm, trying to bring him back. "Neal? You with me?"

_Her body was limp on the floor. He had worked for Mossad for four years and this was the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen._

_"Chanah? Chanah, are you with me?"_

_She responded, slightly, the blood dripping from the gash on her forehead._

_"N'von," Chanah slurred, her golden locks stained red._

"We've got to do something about his forehead," Peter said, noticing the gash that had obviously been created when Neal had been thrown from the force of the explosion. He put his hands on Neal's shoulders, pushing him down onto the ground.

_The flames rose around them, the stink of burning gasoline filled the air and made him gag as it hit his throat. But gasoline- that wasn't right. The bomb had been cyanide._

"Pet'r?" Neal slurred, slipping back into the present time.

"Neal? Can you hear me?"

"Wha' 'appen'?"

"Leonard Morris, our suspect set it, hoping it get us and the files. When I unlocked the car-"

"I 'as closer." He tried to get up, but Peter kept him down and Neal winced at the sharp pain in his shoulder. He pushed off his burned and bloody jacket and ripped at the ruined shirt to the spot where a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself. He went to put it out, but a gentle hand stopped him.

"Leave it in. The paramedics will pull it out," Diana told him softly as Peter tried to back people away from the man on the ground while the ambulance pulled in to the curb. The firemen were spraying the car, the bomb squad was cleaning up the scene, but Neal's mind was back eleven years.

_"Help 'em," Chanah begged, fighting to keep her eyes open. Navon laced the fingers of his good hand through his sister's, squeezing tight to try to keep her away._

_"Chanah, no. You-"_

_"Help 'em, Nav'n. Then help me."_

Neal's grip was too tight on Diana's as the paramedics pulled the stretcher up to them, trying to put Neal on.

_He dropped his sister's hand as a man, one of the men who was the reason he was at the hotel in the first place, tried to attack him. His muscles tensed and he sprung up like an attacking tiger, graceful as he slammed his elbow hard into the man's face, jerking back for the gun, the Jericho 941F he always carried in the back on his pants, despite hating firearm. Eyal preferred a .44 Desert Eagle, but Navon liked his Baby Eagle better._

It was surprisingly steady in his hands, the weapon. How he had managed to slip it off of her in his less than conscious state and cock it to aim at the paramedics, she wasn't sure.

_The weight of the gun was off to Navon. His Baby Eagle was heavier than this._

Diana moved forward carefully, like she was afraid Neal was an animal about to spook, and attempted to pulled her gun away from him. "Neal? It's okay. It's the paramedics."

Instead, he turned on her, his aim deadly, the look in his eyes far off. It was like he saw her, but he wasn't really seeing her. Something about that terrified her more than the idea that Neal Caffrey was pointing a gun at her chest.

_He was hesitating. Why was he hesitating? These men- Chanah wouldn't have come with her co-workers if she hadn't known he was coming here and he would have been at home if these men… he should shoot them like dogs where they stood._

_"Please, wait!" One of them men begged, holding his hands up. He opened his hand, showing the flash drive. "Let us help people out. We give you drive. You let us leave."_

_Their Hebrew was broken at best, but there had been enough death for today. Navon nodded, lowering his weapon and tucking it back in his pants before pulling the shirt back over it. He tried not to show the extent of his pain. He didn't trust these men, but he would have to to get the drive._

Diana let out a breath of relief as Neal lowered the gun, putting it in the back of his pants, before he lowered his shirt and suit jacket over it. She was thankful when Peter noted the action and grabbed the gun out from where he had hit it. The paramedics looked at him anxiously. "Do you think he's safe now?"

The one with the broken nose from where Neal had elbowed him glared. "He's fine. He needs to get to a hospital," Diana told them.

"He nearly shot you, lady!" the one with the broken nose yelled, then flinched in pain. He flinched again as the female FBI agent got up in his face.

"He's out of his head at the moment. He nearly got blown up by a bomb and thrown ten feet. He needs medical attention."

"We'll have to sedate him." She gave him a glare and the two hopped to, restraining and drugging the CI.

"I'll go with him to the hospital," she told Peter, "You take care of things here and meet us there."

"Alright," Peter agreed, though she could see he really wanted to go with Neal.

* * *

It was weird seeing the conman so still on the bed. He was asleep from the medications, his shoulder wrapped up from where the shrapnel had planted itself into Neal, the bandages sticking out from underneath the hospital gown. Diana sat in the chair, waiting for Neal to wake up or Peter to show up, whichever happened first. Peter had called to say he'd be a while, the fallout from the bomb- between the reporters and the reports and bosses- was too much to try to slip away from at the moment.

_He knelt down on the floor beside his sister. "Chanah?"_

_"N'von-" Her eyes were fluttering shut._

_"No, no, no! You stay with me. Do you hear me? You stay with me!" He checked her pulse. It was rapidly becoming faint, until he couldn't feel it at all. "Chanah?" he half asked, half sobbed. His baby sister was dead._

"Di-ana?" a strained voice came and she looked up automatically.

"Neal! How are you feeling?"

"Better than I could be," he winced, shifting in the bed slightly, "Sorry for almost shooting you."

"It's okay." Neal gave her a disbelieving look. "Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be, but due to the circumstances being that you were nearly blown up, I'm willing to forgive it."

"Thanks." He closed his eyes, but he didn't look like he was resting.

"The doctor said that you were flashing back, that it's possible you'd been in another explosion. The only other explosions we know that you've been involved with were the one with Adler and the one with Kate. Only one of those involved a gun, but none of them involved you shooting someone, so care to explain."

Neal chuckled bitterly. "Not really." Diana gave a disapproving sigh and leaned back in the chair. "What I'm about to say never leaves this room." She nodded. "Two thousand two. I was twenty-five. I was- a very different person. I had a Jericho 941F that I carried everywhere where I didn't have to go through customs and wouldn't have given a second thought about shooting if I thought you were a danger because it was better you die than I."

"It's hard to picture," she admitted, "I thought you hate guns."

"I do." Her curious look made him continue. "You cannot tell anyone ever. Not Mozzie, not Peter, no one. If you even try to tell anyone, I can't guarantee your safety. Okay?"

"Okay. Neal, you're sort of scaring me." The uncharacteristic phrase slipped from her lips before she could think about it and Neal looked up. "You didn't kill someone, did you?"

"I'm ignoring that question. My name's not Neal."

Diana rolled her eyes. "Newsflash, everyone knows that Neal Caffrey's just an alias."

He gave her a half smirk, half glare that made her shift back in her chair. "I have a brother and had a sister. I'm the reason my sister's dead." Ice flowed through her veins at his confession. "It was a suicide bomber. I know you're probably thinking that couldn't have been my fault, right?" Diana shrugged and nodded. "Chanah wasn't even supposed to be in Netanya. She was supposed to be with her husband and year-old daughter and in-laws in Haifa, but I was in Netanya and so she came there too."

"Netanya?" she asked, "That's in Israel. What were you doing in Israel?"

"I have an apartment in Tel Aviv. My family is all there. My real life is there." She raised her eyebrow at this, "I had a job and everything."

At this, Diana laughed. "It's kind of hard picturing you having a normal life."

Neal rolled his eyes. "Who ever said anything about normal?"

"So it was probably illegal work?"

"I'm not allowed to answer that question." His look was dead serious. "However, it was a good job." He pointed at himself, "Third generation Mossad, but first to be born in Israel."

Her jaw dropped, then she laughed loudly, as if thinking this was a joke. "You're joking!" Neal's expression stayed serious. "You're not joking."

"No."

"Which is why you don't want me to tell Peter."

"Yes." Diana looked at him, curious now.

"So why tell me?"

Neal's eyes ran over her face, as if looking for any tell of fear. "You were curious about where I learned to break the paramedic's nose like that, about why I reacted the way I did with the bomb. And you have the resources, the connections, to find out. I thought you'd appreciate hearing it from me as compared to some friend who dug too deep and p-ed off Israel and started an international incident."

They sat silently for a long time, Diana in her chair, staring at her hands, Neal staring at the ceiling. "Why?" the quiet word echoed loudly through the room and Neal looked over at her confused. "Why were you in Mossad? You hate guns, you hate violence. It doesn't seem like you. Did they force you to? I mean I know about the mandatory two year service to IDF-"

Neal snort cut her off. "Three years service. Two is for women," he corrected before he continued, "Believe it or not, I wanted that job. I grew up in the Institute, I spoke seven languages by the time I was eleven, knew three forms of martial arts by eighteen, and had the skill set for an exceptional thief. And I knew how to use a gun, use it accurately, and use it lethally. I knew how to get people to trust me, I knew how to handle danger with a level head, and I could be counted on to pull through on a mission. But I'm not that person anymore." His eyes seemed to be pleading with her, but she filed what he had said away in her head- Neal had killed before.

"Were you Kidon?"

At this, Neal laughed hard and loud until he was cut off from coughing from the dust that had settled in his throat during the explosion. "I should have been expecting that question." She raised her eyebrow at him, obviously still expecting his answer. "No, Diana, I was not ever a member of Kidon. I've seen first hand what it does to people." At her disbelieving expression, he shifted up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. "I really wasn't. But my brother was. It destroyed his marriage. His ex-wife hates him." She laughed and he left it at that. He wouldn't tell her that he had trained with them, but hadn't joined, due to an  _argument_  with another member of Kidon that landed him in a Russian prison and he wouldn't have escaped if a FSB officer hadn't helped him. That part was just embarrassing.

"So if you weren't in Mossad's assassination squad, why the secrecy about this? Mozzie and Peter would get over it." Neal glanced around nervously, looking for anyone who might be around. "There's no guards outside the door, if that's what you were wondering."

"Hand me your phone," he ordered. She frowned and didn't move. "I won't answer you."

"You've already told me enough to be incriminating confession for espionage." Neal gave her a look and she sighed, handing him his phone. He pulled out her battery and SIM card.

"If you wanted to be technical, I'm still considered to be an active agent. I never quit, they never stopped sending me paychecks. It could cause a lot of hell for Peter and everyone in the FBI if they knew. That's why I'm asking you to be quiet about this. And if I wasn't so doped up on morphine, I would have never told you any of this."

Diana slouched down, trying to reconnect the two images in her mind. One was of Neal Caffrey- the charming, playboy art thief. The other was of an unnamed Israeli- a cool, calculating spy.

"I guess  _'James Bonds_ ' wasn't so far off for a case name, huh?" Neal chuckled at that. "So am I allowed to know your real name, or would you have to send your brother to come kill me?"

"I wouldn't send him to kill you." He didn't add in,  _I'm perfectly capable of killing you myself,_  because despite being on the really good pain medications, he was nowhere near drugged enough to say something that sounded threatening like that to Diana while he was restrained. "Navon," he finally said, "Navon Chait." She blinked and it was obvious that it wasn't the name she was expecting. "If you try to tell anybody that, you'll disappear like you never existed."

His eyes were cold like she'd never seen before and she had little doubt that he was telling the truth about that. "I won't tell anyone."

A knocking came from the door and Diana straightened suddenly. Neal tossed her the phone and she slipped it inside her jacket as Peter opened the door. "You two look guilty."

"Neal was trying to talk me into letting him go," Diana said at the same time Neal shot out, "Diana wanted to shoot me!"

The older agent stood there, amused. "Well, to be fair, you did nearly shoot her."

"But I didn't!" Neal defended, "And if you had been blown up then randomly getting pushed and shoved at, wouldn't  _you_  try to shoot someone too?"

Peter conceded that point to Neal. "How's your head?"

Neal gave Peter a look that clearly said ' _Really?'_  "It's fine."

"Good. The doctors said you'll be in here another day. We got Leonard Morris on attempted murder and for the bomb and the original charges. I added in destruction of property too, just because he deserved it."

"Careful, Peter," Neal warned, a breathiness to his voice that had been apparent ever since the bomb went off, "You're sounding like Kramer."

He ignored the comment and instead asked, "Did they check your lungs and throat? You sound off."

Diana nodded, speaking for Neal who hadn't seen a doctor the whole time he'd been in the hospital, "The doctor said it was just the dust. It should go away."

Peter nodded, patting Neal's shoulder awkwardly. "Get some rest."

* * *

Diana had dozed off when she was awoken by a rapid flow of words in the language Neal had been speaking earlier by a shadow at the foot of the sleeping man's bed, long after visiting hours. Knowing what she knew now, she figured it to be Hebrew. But the voice of the man who was speaking did not match Neal's. It was heavily accented, but fluid, like water. She slid her hand down to where her gun was, careful not to make any sudden movements that would signify that she was awake. Her attempt was futile, however, as the man turned to her, lifting a finger to his lips in the international symbol of 'be quiet'. He nodded his head to the hallway before he headed out, his footsteps silent and graceful. She followed him, closing the door behind them.

"Who are you and why are you in here?"

"I think you already know the answer to that." His English was, like his Hebrew, heavily accented, but it sounded nice, safe even, almost like he was someone she could trust.

"You're the brother, aren't you?" He smirked and the resemblance between him and Neal was easier to see now.

"Take care of him for me?" She glanced through the window at the sleeping CI, then back to the man.

"I will." The man's smirk faded into a genuine smile.

"Thank you." He handed her back her phone, that until now, she hadn't realized was missing. "I put a number to reach me at. If he gets into too much trouble, let me know." It was obvious where Neal had learned to flirt with women. This was exactly the same kind of stunt that the conman- no, spy, she corrected herself- would have pulled. She crossed her arms over her chest,

"Depends on the kind of trouble. He's pretty good at getting himself out of a mess," she told him, "You should be proud."

"I am." He spared another glance back towards the room. "Don't tell him I was here. He'll get mad. I'm supposed to be in Greece." Diana raised her eyebrows, and the man put his hands up like she might shoot him, "I'm retired. He'd just think that I was going around getting in trouble. You'd think he was the older one with the way he worries."

"Neal? Worries?"

"He worries, Agent Barrigan." The man smiled at her, "Perhaps someday we'll met again." He glanced back into his brother's room, as did she, and when she turned back to him, he was gone.

* * *

Fun Facts about Navon Chait and Family  
• For Neal/Navon to have been born in 1977, his mother would have had been born in at latest 1951, because Eyal was seven when Neal was born. However, Aya Chait was Mossad as Neal points out, and it is likely that she didn't have Eyal until later on. To be third generation Mossad, but be part of the first generation in his family born in the State of Israel, Aya would have had to been born before May 14, 1948, when Israel declared independence from the Mandatory Palestine. This also means that at least one of Aya's parents was also in Mossad.  
• Eyal was a member of Kidon (which means bayonet or "tip of the spear" in Hebrew), which is like Mossad's hit/black op's team. I think this was said when he first met Annie. It sounds like they are a little like Jai's Office of Special Projects, because there is little information available because they're so secretive. According to Wikipedia, training for the unit can take up to two years.  
• James Bonds was the FBI's case file on Neal. This is mentioned in Forging Bonds in Season 2.  
• For Hannah (Chanah), Neal's sister, to have a daughter that's was a year old in 2002, she would not have had mandatory service. She would have opted out because of marriage instead, because she wasn't born until after her parents had remarried, sometime in the early 1980s.  
• If Neal had been with Mossad for four years in 2002 and was still with them in the present time, he would have worked for them for fifteen years. Eyal quit in 2012 and hadn't joined until after their sister had been killed in 2002, so he was only with them for ten years maximum, which means he was in Mossad for less time than his younger brother.  
• Neal is like Simon Fischer on Covert Affairs. Simon is described as being "raised on the farm" and that espionage is literally in his blood, which is like Neal/Navon's life. Simon also trained with the FSB Vympel Force and Neal trained with the Kidon unit.  
• National military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over age 18. Men serve for three years and women serve for two.  
• The FSB officer that helped Neal escape is implied to be Simon, mostly because I liked him and I thought he would have been a fun regular if he wasn't a Russian spy.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't speak Hebrew, so any mistakes are because of that.


End file.
